Posted on 12/20/2007 10:49:56 AM PST by shortstop
Damn Social Security and the thieves who thought it up.
That's my attitude.
As I make a list of reasons why I hate the government, Social Security has to be near the top. It is, for me, the most recognizable and intrusive tyranny in my life.
And that's saying a lot.
We sadly live in a day when the strangling grip of government chokes the life and liberty out of working Americans all across this country. We are little more than sharecroppers and slaves in a system of taxation and regulation which dictates everything in our lives – from what we can build on our property to how much water there is in our toilet. The lion's share of our labor and wealth is confiscated for bloated bureaucracies and covetous welfare parasites. We are burdened by a government that has long since stopped being what the Founders envisioned.
So when you're making a list of reasons to hate the government, you better have lots of time and lots of paper.
But today we're going to talk about Social Security.
And how Social Security has deprived me of my life's dream.
First, the dream. One evening, when I was 19, in a trailer in the Arizona desert near Winslow, I decided I wanted land. Country land. As I stood there talking with my host, he told me about the five acres upon which his trailer sat, and his plans for it.
And it fired my imagination. I thought of all the things you could do with a few acres. And for years I've thought about it. I've read and planned and daydreamed.
I want some country land. Where it rains and the trees grow and you can pasture cows and plant crops and stock your pond with fish. I want chickens and sheep and a woodlot.
I want it for the peace of it, for the hard calloused-hands work of it, for the fruitfulness of it and for the self-reliance of it. It's my heritage, and I'd like it to be my future.
But I am not a man of means. I'm a wage earner. I'm a middle-income guy with a lot of kids and all the money I make goes to supporting my family.
And the government. My family budget has always been pressed toward insolvency by the voracious, thieving hand of government. Year after year I have cut corners and shorted my children while money I've earned has been siphoned away by a government that takes it before I see it. I have less and less and the government takes more and more. All of society is entitled to my paycheck – except me.
And so at 48 I am no nearer my country land than I was at 19.
Which gets me back to Social Security.
I was going through some papers the other day and found that little mailing the Social Security Administration sends out periodically, the one that shows how much of your money they've taken from you, year by year. I looked at the numbers and added them up and the total struck me odd. It occurred to me, looking at the numbers, that I had essentially paid a mortgage over the near 35 years of my working life. A mortgage that, applied to land, would have long since given me my dream.
And my freedom. And a great deal more security and prosperity than Social Security will ever provide.
See, the idea of land is not just some country idyll. It's also a practical objective, a means to an independent end. While the government wants me to be dependent in my old age on a miserly monthly check, I would rather provide myself with the means of self-support.
With just a few acres of land, tillable and forested, I would with simple labor be able to provide myself with food and heat. I could raise and grow what I ate and cut and chop what I burned. I could become at least in part self-sufficient.
And that is a far-preferable retirement plan to a Social Security check. In the name of providing for my old age, the government has taken away my ability to provide for myself in my old age. Instead of investing my income as I see fit – in land or in anything else – it is stolen by the government and put into a Ponzi scheme that has no realistic likelihood of being solvent when it comes my turn to retire. To promise me security, the government must deprive me of liberty.
I have lost the ability to use my own money as I see fit. I have lost the ability to provide for my own retirement. I have lost the simplest right of a free man – the right to live by the sweat of my own brow, and not have it stolen away by a covetous and avaricious government in whose eyes I am little more than a beast of burden.
Country land would provide many of my needs until I grew too enfeebled to work it. Then I could sell it to get myself the care I need. In time I would die, but I would go to my grave having paid my own way and having lived as I chose.
But those are things the government now deprives me of.
I have clung to a dream, and one simple tax has destroyed it. My dream is going into some drunk's SSI check, or into the rat hole of the welfare/bureaucracy complex, the vast industry that lives off the life's blood of Americans who work.
I love my country. I would die for the Constitution. But I hate my government. I hate what generations of snakes in elective office have done to the greatest nation and the freest people ever to grace the earth.
We should be free to plan for our old age they way we want. To invest our money in land or a business or in stocks and bonds. We should be free from ridiculous taxes that don't deliver what they promise. We should be free from the socialist dreams of long-dead New Dealers.
But we are not free – we are Americans.
And damn the men who have made us this way.
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
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I went through the same exercise and came to the same conclusion; had my (and my employers) Social Security contributions gone into my IRA rather than the “Trust Fund”, I could retire now (mid 50’s), live off the earnings, and never touch the principal.
“In my opinion amputation, cutting off SS immediately is the answer.”
So what do you do for the people, say 55 and above who are expecting it and those already retired already on it?
Social Security is, and always has been, nothing more than a government run Ponzi scheme that will eventually go the way of ALL such schemes.
The Teachers and the educational bureaucrats in Colorado have opted out of Social Security. There’s at least one other State that has allowed this.
So, go to work as a school janitor! In the long run you’ll make more money!
bookmark
Paid my share,,RIF,ted in ‘04 ,,oh happy day..
Back when they came up with 401K’s I knew it was the beginning of the end for SS. Anyone who now assumes that SS will take care of them in their retirement is deluding themselves. It’s unfortunate, and I don’t like throwing money away either, but you have to “plan for the worst and hope for the best” with these things. If I actually do ever see one cent back from them it’ll be considered gravy.
AMEN!
Go Here and read! Follow the links provided.
“I went through the same exercise”
And that is exactly how a campaign could be developed and presented to the American people to get them aware of this stinking ponzi scheme.
A down-loadable program which would allow people to input their own numbers directly from the socialist security and numbers from actual and projected mutual/bond/banking funds growth figures.
I have told many people of my exercise and they just get the deer-in-the-headlights look.
But that nest of vipers sunk their fangs into us and acquired power and developed a dependency state. I am about 4 years from retirement age and my children will have to make a choice....to pay or put in politicians who will reverse this dastardly deed. I don't want my children to be enslaved by the government to the tune of 82% (some say) of their earnings, just to keep the social security system afloat. It is past time for a tea party again.
The combined employee and employer tax rate is 15.3% Many low- and moderate-income workers pay more into SS than in federal income taxes. The SS system has a negative net present value for almost every full-time worker who was born after 1953.
I did the same "present value" analysis from the time I started until age 65.
When I used 5% as the APR, the number was about $3.3 million, at 7% it was about $5.6 million when I used 13.7% {which was the actual rate of return I earned with my IRAs and 401Ks} the number was so high I threw up.
So when I get my monthly 2K stipend from what the feds stole from me, I just sigh and am grateful that I put my real money into IRAs and 401Ks so that I can afford to eat dog food. s/off
I hate to think what he will write when he decides to write about inflation.
Hardly a loser.
He’s a very popular local talk show host.
I would hope your response was sarcasm.
I had a similar come to Jesus meeting when I was in my mid-twenties I decided SS would not be around when I was eligible and planned accordingly. Well I’m two years away from retirement now and although SS is still around it is considerably less than my other plan. It also is about half of what my father drew in adjusted dollars. Any youngsters out there should take heed.
You are now the third person who hase responded to my “ran the numbers” post with the fact that they did the same with the same conclusions. We have been screwed by the socialists. I hope an awakening will happen to save my kids and grandkids from this crapola.
Oh sure, Roosevelt didn't start bringing actual socialism to the United States until after 1933. But even Adults living then did not realize the true benefits of a fully Constitutional form of government because they were living during a depression.
Academically, in concept, we know what Liberty and a Constitutional form of government means. Yeah, in theory we know but not practically. In reality, we Americans have no experience with the freedom intended by the Founding Fathers, and we have no one to tell us about it.
As a country, we are missing our "institutional memory" concerning liberty and freedom. Hence, we have no real idea of exactly what we are missing, were the federal government to be operated constitutionally.
Isn't that a bummer! We have zero practical experience with liberty. We're Americans. Yet, we have never once lived under that Constitutional form of government designed for us by the Founding Fathers.
Hey! No wonder we don't miss it. None of us have ever seen it. No wonder there are no riots in the streets demanding the return of Liberty. We cannot ask for the "return" of something we have never had. And no wonder the government feels free to control everything in our lives from womb to tomb. None of us are doing much complaining about it.
This has been going on so long; most Americans actually think government is supposed to do things that way.
The Constitution? Oh yeah; that's that old document kept under glass in Washington. The problem is, we Americans can no longer remember exactly what it was for.
Just as an aside here: Some of us would honestly like to have a shot at living under a truly Constitutional form of government. We would like to try life with all of those individual rights and liberties George Washington, James Madison and the guys at the Constitutional Convention intended for us.
What do you think?
Will YOU help us?
Lets do a couple of quick calculations:
If Lonsberry was making 50K a year for 35 years, his ss contribution would be $3,000 a year (6% if I remember correctly). Now multiply that by 35 years, that is $105,000. You have got to admit that he didn’t make $50,000 a year, but for this purpose it is a way high estimate.
I looked at my property assessment for just the land, not the buildings, and it is $135,000/acre. I am astounded that he thinks all of his financial woes are caused by social security.
My advise, BOB: You can get anything in life you want, if you really want it and be willing to work for it. Perhaps if you had fewer kids, fewer wives, or a simpler lifestyle you would have what you desired.
Not to jump on Lonsberry, but I know he is LDS, and he is not complaining about the tithe he pays. It is higher than he has paid in SS.
.....Bob
I thought of doing that a few nights ago. I have the figures. Going to do it in the next few days. I know I'll be pi$$ed. I 'contributed' from 1961 to 2005.
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